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Tag Archives: history

A Fulbright Scholar Returns Bearing Gifts

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentina, bookstores, Bueno Aires, culture, English, Fulbright Scholar, H. Bustos Domecq, history, Jorge Luis Borges, language, Latin America, literature, Lyuba Basin, Magic Realism, milongas, Para Las Seis Cuerdas, short stories, solidarity, Sur, tango, The Invention of Morel

Rich in imagery and fantastical in nature, La Trama Celeste by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Para Las Seis Cuerdas by Jorge Luis Borges are the two newest additions to the Rare Books Latin American collection.

Every country has a history – that is certain. If we are too young to know our history through life and experience, textbooks can only try to educate us a little further. Unfortunately, the academic rhetoric of such books distances us from the very roots of history, the emotional and personal connections between a country and its citizens where the story of a culture is revealed. This story can only be found within the language of literature.

Recently, I was looking for the story of Argentina. As I walked along the sidewalks of the capital city in the interior province of Córdoba, the modern roads and upscale storefronts clashed with the colonial architecture of the popular Jesuit churches. It was the Jesuit Order which founded the oldest university in the country, and gave Córdoba city the nickname, “The Learned One.”

jesuitchurch

In order for me to learn more about this country, I had to explore the hidden nooks and crannies which veered off main roads. These quiet alleyways acted as a personal time machine and led me even further into the history of Argentina, into old bookstores covered in dust and filled with the smell of lingering memories and dreams.

My presence in the small bookstore on Avenida 9 de Julio was initially ignored, much like many of the old photographs and postcards that had been lost or forgotten. I lingered quietly in between the stacks of books for a while, before I decided to formally introduce myself to the two old men drinking mate at the counter.

nooksandcrannies

“Hola, soy de los Estados Unidos y trabajo con la biblioteca de la Universidad de Utah, en el departmento de los libros raros. Me interesa encontrar primeras ediciones de Borges y Bioy Casares. Pueden ayudarme?”

My newly acquired Argentine accent complimented my foreign mystique, and led the owner to realize that I wasn’t merely a tourist passing by. His eyes opened wide and he smiled, directing me to sit in a dusty chair and wait. Espera. I settled in to the soft, velvet cushions, excited by the all the fragile pages of the venerable books around me. That excitement I felt was elevated to extremes when the owner returned with a dozen or more first edition books and set them in front of the chair. Para vos, he said, for you.

One such book was La Trama Celeste by Buenos Aires writer, Adolfo Bioy Casares.

bioycasarescover

La Trama Celeste
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Buenos Aires: Sur, 1948
First Edition

In Memory of Paulina:
I always wanted Paulina. In one of my first memories, Paulina and I are hidden in a dark gazebo of laurels, in a garden with two stone lions. Paulina said to me: I like the blue, I like the grapes, I like the ice, I like the roses, I like the white horses. I understood that my happiness had begun, because in these preferences I could identify myself with Paulina. It seemed so miraculous to us that in a book about the final meeting of the souls in the soul of the world, my friend wrote in the margin: Ours already met. “Ours” at that time, meant hers and mine.

bioycasaresspread

Translated into English as The Celestial Plot, this collection of short stories was first published in December 1948. By this time, Bioy Casares had already made a name for himself with the release of his novella The Invention of Morel (1940). In addition to his renowned literary works, his fame was elevated by his longstanding friendship with the Argentina’s literary hero, Jorge Luis Borges.

While both working with Sur magazine in the early 1930’s, the two writers met and before long transformed their friendship into a series of collaborative works, often published under the name of H. Bustos Domecq. Over the years, Bioy Casares and Borges, among others, worked to develop the growing genre of philosophical literature in Latin America, sometimes vaguely defined as Magic Realism, connecting dreams and reality through mazes, mirrors and memories, while consistently begging the question of identity.

Within an elite circle of intellectuals, the famous fantastical writers might have seemed impervious to the desolate reality of political, economic and social decline outside the walls of the publishing house. However, it was never too far from reach. Between the lines of their collected literary works the influence of their country’s politics can easily be seen.

In Borges’ collection of poetry Para Las Seis Cuerdas (For the Six Strings) the history of Argentina is depicted in a series of 11 milongas, folkloric songs written in the style of the famous Argentine tango.

borgescover

Para Las Seis Cuerdas
Jorge Luis Borges
Illustrated by Héctor Basaldúa
Buenos Aires, Emecé Editores, 1965
First Edition
Edition of 3,000

Someone Speaks of the Tango
Tango that I have seen dancing
Against a yellow sunset
By those who were able
Of another dance, that of the knife.

Tango from that Maldonado
With less water than mud;
Tango whistling in passing
From the side of the car.

Carefree and loose,
You always looked straight ahead,
Tango you were the one
To be a man and to be brave.

Tango you were happy,
Like I have been as well,
According to my memory,
Which is a little forgetful.

Since that yesterday, how many things
Have happened to us both;
The games and the regret
To love and not be loved.

I will have died and you will continue
Bordering our life;
Buenos Aires does not forget you
Tango that you were and will be

borgesspread

The tango is just one of the cultural phenomena written within Argentina’s diverse history, a history which asks all those who are part of it, or wish to study it, to participate in a continuous conversation. This conversation must include many countries, cultures and languages. Unlike common textbooks, the language of literature provides us with the key to get the very core of history and culture. Unlike textbooks, literature helps define solidarity and shows us how similar we truly are.

Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books Assistant and graduate student in World Languages and Culture at the University of Utah, who also provided the translations.

Editor’s note: Welcome home, Lyuba and thank you for your gifts!

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We recommend — Mother Goose Refigured

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cassel & Company, Charles Perrault, chocolate, Christine A. Jones, Christine Jones, Cinderella, Circle Publishing Co., collotype, Detroit, Dunewald Printing Corporation, Edmund Dulac, fairy tale, folklore, France, history, Hollywood, Honors Humanities Professorship Lecture, Jennifer Schacker, Julian Wehr, Kathryn Kay, Leon Bakst, Little Red Riding Hood, luxury, magic, Matt Saunders, medicine, Mother Goose, Pierpont Morgan Library, rare books, Special Collections, The University Distinguished Teaching Award, tippet, trades, University of Utah, Wayne State University Press


cover art by Matt Saunders

cover art by Matt Saunders

“…its no surprise
If the wolf takes many a prize.
I say the wolf because not all wolves are the same.
There are those of courteous fame,
No noise or bile or rage,
But reserved, compliant, and sage,
Who will trail a girl well bred
All the way home, into her bed.
Ah! But as everyone knows, it’s the saccharine tongues,
Of all the wolves, who are the most dangerous ones.”
— Charles Perrault, “The Little Red Tippet”
—- translation by Christine Jones

Mother Goose Refigured: A Critical Translation of Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales
Christine A. Jones
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016

University of Utah Associate Professor Christine Jones is a specialist of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, with interests in the luxury trades and the fairy tale. She is the author of Shapely Bodies: The image of Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century France, as well as numerous articles on trade history. With folklore scholar Jennifer Schacker, she coedited Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology of Fairy Tales and Contemporary Critical Perspectives and Feathers, Paws, Fins, and Claws: Fairy-Tale Beasts.

Her work as a scholar and a teacher has been recognized with numerous honors and awards, including The University Distinguished Teaching Award (2014) and the Honors-Humanities Professorship (2015). For the Honors-Humanities Professorship Lecture she spoke to a packed house about “When Chocolate was Magic and Medicine.” She has introduced numerous undergraduate and graduate students to the enchantment of working with rare books and Rare Books.

We celebrate the publication of Christine’s latest book with an invitation to hold some of the rare magic for yourself by visiting Special Collections.

Tales of Mother Goose: the dedication manuscript of 1695 reproduced in collotype facsimile, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1956 Z115Z P43

Tales of Mother Goose: the dedication manuscript of 1695 reproduced in collotype facsimile, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1956
Z115Z P43

pq1877-c66-1955-v-2-portrait


“Cinderella is not a singular but plural, not a stable identity but a constantly shifting one. She is made of so many different versions of identity layered up in printed, oral, and visual media that she might be called a ‘palimpsest.'” — from the Introduction, Mother Goose Revisited

Possible Squeeze Play. This Advice I chanced Upon, That's Influenced Me Quit a Lot -- "If the shoe fits--put it on!" Just Look What Cinderella Got!, Kathryn Kay, Circle Publishing Co., 1942

Possible Squeeze Play. This Advice I chanced Upon, That’s Influenced Me Quite a Lot — “If the shoe fits–put it on!” Just Look What Cinderella Got!, Kathryn Kay, Circle Publishing Co., 1941 PS3521 A88 P677 1941


“Dressing the part so that people take you seriously as a way to draw attention to yourself when you would otherwise go unnoticed…sounds logical.” — from the Introduction, Mother Goose Refigured

A FAIRY GARLAND, BEING FAIRY TALES… Edmund Dulac, Cassel & Company, 1928 PZ8 F1685 1928 PZ8 F1685 1928

A FAIRY GARLAND, BEING FAIRY TALES…
Edmund Dulac,
Cassel & Company, 1928
PZ8 F1685 1928


“Even a wit of the dimmest cast,
Who is not so very worldly,
Will discover anon that this story
Is a tale of times long past.
No more the horrible husband of old
Whose demands were impossibly bold.
Though now he be discontent and domineering
Still with his wife he’s endearing.
The color of his beard no longer stands
To show among them who wears the pants.”
—Charles Perrault, “The Blue Beard”
—-translation by Christine Jones

L'Oeuvre de Leon Bakst pour La belle au bois dormant, M. de Brunhoff, 1922 ND699 B3 L38

L’Oeuvre de Leon Bakst pour La belle au bois dormant, M. de Brunhoff, 1922
ND699 B3 L38

nd699-b3-l38


“While she was crossing the woods, she ran into the neighborhood wolf, who very much wanted to eat her but did not dare because of the woodsmen in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor girl, who did not know that it is dangerous to stop and listen to wolves, told him…”
—Charles Perrault, “Little Red Tippet”
—-translation by Christine Jones

Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Julian Wehr, Dunewald Printing Corporation, 1944 PZ8 L783 We

Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Julian Wehr, Dunewald Printing Corporation, 1944
PZ8 L783 We

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Book of the Week — Lexicon Tetraglotton…

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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alchemy, alphabet, anatomist, anatomy, architecture, Aristotle, Ben Jonson, Benjamin Franklin, cats, Charles, chemistry, clothing, dictionary, England, English, engraver, engraving, Europe, France, French, frontispiece, history, horsemanship, hunting, Italian, Italy, James Howell, Kenelm Digby, Kings, lexicography, lexicon, library, London, Machiavelli, Oxford, physician, political, Poor Richard's Almanac, proverbs, reference, Restoration, Samuel Thompson, Spain, Spanish, tracts, travel, trees, Wales, William Faithorne, William Harvey, women

lexicon-tetraglotton-frontis

lexicon-tetraglotton-title

“A catt may look on a king”

Lexicon Tetraglotton, an English-French-Italian-Spanish…
James Howell (1594? – 1666)
London: Printed by J.G. for Samuel Thompson, 1660
First and only edition

James Howell, born in Wales and educated at Oxford, began his literary career in 1640 with the political allegory, Dendrologia: Dodona’s Grove, or, The Vocall Forest, an account representing the history of England and Europe through the framework of a typology of trees. He continued to write political tracts throughout the 1640s and 1650s, drawing material from Aristotle, Machiavelli, and others. Howell befriended many literary figures, including Ben Jonson and Kenelm Digby. In 1620, he became ill and was treated by physician and anatomist William Harvey.

Howell wrote Instructions for Forreine Travel in 1642, a book of useful information about safe travel in France, Spain, and Italy. Traveling in his own country proved to be hazardous, however. On a visit to London early in 1643, he was arrested in his chambers and imprisoned for the next eight years. He spent this time writing. He was released from prison at the Restoration of Charles to the throne and in 1661 was made Historiographer Royal.

Howell was a master of modern romance languages. Lexicon is a dictionary but also contains epistles and poems on lexicography; characterizations of most letters of the alphabet; and vocabulary lists organized in 52 sections, such as anatomy, chemistry, alchemy, women’s clothing, horsemanship, hunting, architecture, and a library. Howell collected proverbs in English, Italian, Spanish and French which are added in Proverbs, or, Old Sayed Savves & Adages. Benjamin Franklin used this book as a reference for his own Poor Richard’s Almanac.

In the frontispiece, engraved by William Faithorne (1616-1691), four female figures, emblematic of England, France, Spain and Italy, stand among trees with a helmeted figure to the right standing guard. This copy contains a later state of the engraving with initials identifying the countries represented. Half-title and title-page in red and black. Rare Books copy gift of Anonymous, for whose generosity and friendship we are ever grateful.

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Hold History in Your Hands

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Charles Dickens, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Galileo, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), history, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John L. Stephens (1805-1852), Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Rare Books Department, Shawn Sheahy, Special Collections, The University of Utah, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

HoldHistory(Blog)

The Rare Books Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah invites students, faculty, and community members to visit the Special Collections Reading Room (Level 4), where you can hold history in your hands.

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The rare book collections of nearly 80,000 pieces includes first editions of Galileo’s Dialogo (1632), Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620), Dickens’ Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836), Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de Musique (1768), Stephens’ Incidents of Travel in Central America (1841), Swift’s Travels into Remote Nations of the World (1726), Thoreau’s Walden (1854), and much, much more.

Rare Books welcomes U!

Wildflower-violet-sRGB

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Looking forward to Book Arts Program workshop, “All Shook Up: Text & Image in Flag Books”

01 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Workshop

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1954, American, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, artist, artists' books, Book Arts Studio, Brooklyn Museum, Canadian Bookbinders & Artists' Guild, Center for Book Arts, Designer Bookbinders (US), digital printing, flag book structure, Florence, Florida Atlantic University, Fogg Museum of Art, Glenview, Graceland, Guild of Book Workers, Harvard University, Hedi Kyle, history, Illinois, image, Italy, J. Willard Marriott Library, jig, Karen Hanmer, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Les Amis de la Reliure d'Art du Canada, Library of Congress, military, New York City, non-adhesive, photograph, Photoshop, politics, science, Tate Britain, text, UCLA, University of West England Bristol

Text & Image in Flag Books
Karen Hanmer, instructor

July 7
Thursday, 9:00–5:00
Book Arts Studio, J. Willard Marriott Library, Level 4
Application for this workshop is closed.

The foundation of Hedi Kyle’s deceptively small and simple book flag book structure is an accordion folded spine. Flaps attached to both sides of each of the spine’s mountain folds allow the artist to fragment and layer a number of complementary or contrasting images and narratives. When the flag book spine is pulled fully open, the fragmented images on the flaps come together to create a large, panoramic image. Participants experiment with complementary and contrasting text and images and discuss the effects of different spine and page dimensions, direction of motion, and which images are most successful. Students learn a tidy, non-adhesive method of covering boards and use a jig to facilitate quicker, more precise assembly. While this is not a computer class, digital printing and setting up Photoshop templates for pages, covers and spines is demonstrated.
– – – – –
Karen Hanmer’s artists’ books are physical manifestations of personal essays intertwining history, culture, politics, science and technology. She utilizes both traditional and contemporary book structures, and the work is often playful in content or format. Hanmer exhibits widely, and her work is included in collections ranging from Tate Britain and the Library of Congress to UCLA and Graceland. Solo exhibition venues include Florida Atlantic University, University of the West of England Bristol, and the Center for Book Arts (NYC). Curated exhibition venues include the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University’s Fogg Museum of Art, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft; and traveling exhibitions sponsored by the Guild of Book Workers (US), Designer Bookbinders (UK) the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists’ Guild, and Les Amis de la Reliure d’Art du Canada.

Rare Books is proud to support the Book Arts Program with its collections.

N7433.4-H357-L48-2004-front N7433.4-H357-L48-2004-back

Letter Home
Karen Hanmer
Glenview, IL: K. Hanmer, 2004
N7433.4 H357 L48 2004

Hedi Kyle flag book structure. One side of each flag has text, the other side of each flag has a color image which is part of a family photograph. The family photograph becomes whole when the accordion folds are stretched and the pages fall open. Text is from a letter written from Italy in 1954 by a military wife to her relatives. Upper and lower boards are covered in reproduction of a photograph of an American woman [the artist’s mother] on a balcony overlooking Florence, Italy. Issued in an artist-made phase box of green map folder stock with fabric hook-and-loop fasteners.

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DOC/UNDOC — Part 1/6, “Peruse, Inspect, Handle, Consider”

18 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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1552, 1770, 1859, 1885, 1934, 1998, Aristotle, Ars Shamánica Performática, artists' books, Baroque, Bartolomé de las Casas, book artists, books, codex, Codex Espangliensis, Codex Ixtilxochitl, communication, Doc/Undoc, documentation, Emily McVarish, Enlightenment, ethnography, Felicia Rice, fine press, format, Gobierno General, Granary Books, Greco-Roman, Grolier Club, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Hernan Cortés, history, ideas, image, Isabel Dulfano, Jae Jennifer Rossman, Jed Birmingham, Jennifer González, Johanna Drucker, journal, Kathy Walkup, Kyle Schlesinger, language, Latin, Latin America, literary analysis, literary criticism, literature, Luise Poulton, Managing Curator, manuscript, Mimeo Mimeo, Moving Parts Press, multimedia, Nombres Geografico de Mexico, Open Book, parchment, political, printing press, rare books, Rare Books Department, readers, rhetoric, scroll, sequence, Spanish, stone, story, suitcase, text, The Bonefolder, type, University of Utah, Webster's Dictionary, Women's Studio Workshop, writing

During Fall Semester, 2015, University of Utah graduate students in SPAN6900-2 Analyzing Texts: Form and Content visited Rare Books. During the third and final session with Rare Books, the students were introduced to late 20th century/early 21st century fine press and artists’ books. The session ended with the premiere viewing of our copy of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, purchased in September. Student response was so strong that managing curator Luise Poulton, in her typical, over-enthusiastic way, exclaimed, “You should post your thoughts on Open Book!” Prof. Isabel Dulfano, in her own enthusiastic way, immediately took up the suggestion and made this a new assignment, right then and there. Bless the beleaguered grad students! Rare Books is pleased to present these responses, one post at a time, beginning with comments from Dr. Dulfano.

Introduction
Isabel Dulfano, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Spanish, The University of Utah

This commentary tells the story of how our class came to view the artist book, DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática (2014, Moving Parts Press) by Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice at the Rare Books Department in the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. Our reading of this extraordinary, groundbreaking book object came as the culmination of our interrogation of form and content of literary works during a class called “Analyzing Texts: Form and Content.”

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

During three library sessions, Luise Poulton, Managing Curator of Rare Books, provided an eclectic sampling of Latin American-themed pieces for the students to peruse, inspect, handle, and consider. Touching and examining a wide variety of books from over a 600-year period turned literary analysis into a visceral as well as intellectual practice. Luise challenged us to think about the history of books, from technological milestones and inventions, to the conceptual remapping and physical reshaping of the concept of book over time.

Webster’s Dictionary defines books as “a handwritten or printed work of fiction or nonfiction, usually on sheets of paper fastened or bound together within covers” as well as a “division of a literary work.” However the artist book transforms a known form of the book, “which once toyed with, interrogated, or in any way manipulated, reveals itself as a complex composition, a work produced, upon reading, by the orchestration of its parts” (Rossman 10). Artists’ books rely on the reader’s operation of the component parts in a continuously generative process, which pushes the limits of what literary analysis may have to take into account in the contemporary world.

The first of three meetings in the Rare Books Classroom began with the hands-on display of original and facsimile copies of classic canonical texts, masterfully printed at the time of inscription and in the distinctive style of the individual printing press. Titles by Bartolomé de las Casas and Hernan Cortés or the Codex Ixtlilxochitl revealed historical and ethnographic information that maintained conventional print production formats and content appropriate to known genres. Acknowledging books as one of the principle forms of documentation used to convey and disseminate ideas, we queried the relationship between the use of a medium (stone, parchment, scroll, codex, manuscript, printed bound book) and its’ content (genre, message, symbols, themes, subject/stylistics) in these celebrated texts.

Entre los remedios q do Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, 1552

Entre los remedios q do Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, 1552

Histoira de Nueva-Espana, 1770

Historia de Nueva-Espana, 1770

The next sessions shifted in time to the late Baroque/Enlightenment period through the late XIXth century, eventually reaching the present-day. A gradual disruption of structure (physical and conceptual) followed this chronological timeline. Older documents were logical in their coherence and assemblage, adhering to what Johanna Drucker identifies as the two fundamental structural elements of a book: finitude and sequence (257). Sequence “participates in the distribution of elements into an organized system where location helps provide access” (258 Drucker). A hybrid book includes language and image (text, type, and format) to tell a story, which challenges conventional notions of sequence. The resulting fragmentation in the articulation of narrative sequence provides an “integral part of its meaning” (Drucker 262).

Gobierno General, 1859

Gobierno General, 1859

Nombres geograficos de Mexico, 1885

Nombres geograficos de Mexico, 1885

Contemporary ouevres may appeal partially to traditional literary print formats by utilizing canonical forms as at least one component, however simultaneously they reject the limitations and conventional parameters implicit in a manuscript. Modern works disavow orthodox arrangement, organization or configuration. Some recent examples even repudiate documentation aligned with the standard regimented form of a bounded print book, and instead experiment with democratizing form and defamiliarization techniques (McVarish, 2008). Many deconstruct authorial privilege, since the reader operates and manipulates the text to produce meaning. As Jae Jennifer Rossman points out “in artist’s books the hallmark of the medium is endowing the physical attributes of the book with part of the message” (86), thereby interleaving form and content inextricably together. The artist book uniquely transmits message through myriad surfaces, spaces, materials, concepts, and sequences.

West Indies, Ltd., 1934

West Indies, Ltd., 1934

Codex Espangliensis, 1998

Codex Espangliensis, 1998

As literary critics and scholars of literature we are engaged in the practice of approaching, analyzing and appraising literature, as well as instructing students to do the same. The act of literary criticism is a technical and esthetic evaluation of the oral and written forms of articulation of narrative sequence, discourse, and message of an author’s perspective on the human condition and spirit. It is based on certain known principles, outlined originally by Greco-Roman intellectuals in the Western tradition. The utilization of the tools of this trade, such as identification of, and interpretation of, structural elements or rhetorical and literary devices has taken place since Aristotle. Literary analysis involves a process of extracting meaning from literature, a word derived from the Latin littera, referring to an esthetic represented in written documents of one type or another. The book manuscript, principal medium used for conveying and disseminating ideas, especially in the Leporello and Concertina style, have served as the predominant Western medium for millennia.

In this class, we were able to witness the evolution of book formats as the concept passed through multiple permutations from scroll and parchment to bounded manuscript to the extreme case of DOC/UNDOC housed in a suitcase, with multimedia such as: “A traveling case for apprentice shamans, A reliquary for imaginary saints, A toolbox for self-transformation, A quiet call to heal yourself with fetishes and antidotes, A border kit to face the uncertainty of future crossings.” In fact, in DOC/UNDOC the abundant mixed media, hybridity of language and image, amalgamation of a hand-written contemporary codex, interactive suitcase with mirrors and paraphernalia, CD, and DVD video of (director, writer, performance artist, activist, and docent) Guillermo Gomez Peña’s Daliesque performance, destabilizes our quotidian understanding of the process of documentation. Many features of Doc/Undoc insist on deviation from the typical privileged form of written, sequenced, and finitely orchestrated communication.

Doc/Undoc -- photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

In this manner it participates in what The Bonefolder, a journal dedicated to book artists, describes as the constant “challenge of defining art and craft, looking to the past for tradition and forward for new possibilities” (Fox, Krause, & Simmons 2009). As a consequence, the auto-referential title of Doc/Undoc is explored thematically and structurally to demystify the legal, political, literary, and philosophical ramifications of being documented or not having documentation. The outcome of this creation sui generis raises a host of questions about how to read, what reading is, what literature is, identity, genre, legitimate/illegitimacy, forms of documentation, the role of readers, and the mutability of the authorial/director’s hand that remain unresolved.

The history of literature begins with the history of writing. Analysis emerges as individuals start to engage in the interpretation and valuation of literary works. We have analytical tools that enrich and expand our comprehension of the informative, communicative, linguistic, stylistic, and aesthetic components of a literary work. For instance, we can determine the genre of a given oeuvre; or try to discern the author or oeuvres’ intention with respect to art for art’s sake, didactic/instructive ends, or postulation of an engagé committed message. These are rudimentary points of departure in analysis, yet as literature evolves, and documentation itself is brought into question, the entire repertoire of analytic tools will be needed in order to grapple with the changing format, structure and content.

Our interactions, alias sessions in Rare Books, with “books” from pre-conquest Latin America to more modern examples forced the class to think about literary analysis in a whole new manner rarely addressed in standard textbooks. Bringing home the very concrete, tangible aspect of a book, through our physical engagement, incited a distinct appreciation of the knowledge and wonder incarnate in hard copy, electronic, virtual, artists’ books or otherwise. Our task was to unlock their universe by questioning the implications of the form and meaning – the how and what – of their documentation or lack thereof. Coincidentally, DOC/UNDOC invites the reader to participate in a similar kind of intellectual endeavor; the analysis and reading of a provocative revalorization of the act of documentation in the twenty-first century.

20151201_155114

Drucker, Johanna, Granary Books, and Press Collection. The Century of Artists’ Books. 2nd ed. 2004: 257-285. Print.
Fox, A., Krause, D., and Simmons, S.K. (Fall 2009),The Hybrid Book: Intersection and Intermedia,The Bonefinder: An e- Journal For The Book Binder And The Book Artist,Volume 6, Number 1. Retrieved Dec.4, 2015 from http://digilib.syr.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/bonefolder&CISOPTR=76&filename=78.pdf
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, Rice, Felicia, Vazquez, Gustavo, González, Jennifer A., Watkins, Zachary, and Moving Parts Press, Publisher. DOC/UNDOC : Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática. 2014. Print.
McVarish, Emily. (Autumn 2008). Artist books Mimeo Mimeo No. 2 Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger
Rossman, Jae Jennifer. 2010. Documentary Evidence: The Aura of Veracity in Artists’ Book. In Walkup, Kathy., and Grolier Club. Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop 2010. Print.

Coming soon: Response from Sam DeMonja

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Book of the week — Leviathan

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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A. Crooke, English, English Licensers, history, Leviathan, London, philosophy, Puritan Revolution, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), United States Constitution



LEVIATHAN OR, THE MATTER, FORME, AND POWER OF A COMMON-WEALTH, ECCLESIASTICALL AND CIVILL
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
London: Printed for A. Crooke, 1651
First edition

Thomas Hobbes lived during a momentous period in English history. His Leviathan, a product of those troubled times, was one of the most important and controversial works of the seventeenth century. The English civil war, and the general conflict between royalists and republicans spurred Hobbes to write this, his greatest work. Banned as heretical and seditious and ordered to be burnt by the English Licensers almost immediately after this first edition was printed, Leviathan was reprinted in numerous spurious editions. In 1703 it was placed on the Index. For all that, the work was extremely influential, affecting, for instance, the early writings of Spinoza. Thomas Hobbes, writing during the period of the Puritan Revolution (1640’s), rejected the prevalent theory of divine right of kings and supported the idea of a social contract. He believed that the power of the sovereign was subject to certain limits. However, he defended absolutism, unpopular even in his day, as a necessary antidote to anarchy. The individual, then, except to save his own life, should always submit to the State. Later emphasis on the rights of the individual led to a decline in Hobbes’s influence. Even so, Leviathan was a major influence on the framers of the United States Constitution.

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We recommend – Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

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citizenship, history, Mitt Romney, Mormon, Mormonism, Mormons, New York, Oxford University Press, polygamy, Protestant, race, racial, religion, The University of Utah, United States, W. Paul Reeve


Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness
W. Paul Reeve
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015

The Protestant white majority in nineteenth-century United States was convinced that Mormonism represented a racial – not merely religious – departure from the mainstream and they spent considerable effort attempting to deny Mormon whiteness. Being white equaled access to political, social, and economic power, all aspects of citizenship in which outsiders sought to limit or prevent Mormon participation. At least a part of those efforts came through persistent attacks on the collective Mormon body, ways in which outsiders suggested that Mormons were physically different, racially more similar to marginalized groups than they were white. Medical doctors went so far as to suggest that Mormon polygamy was spawning a new race. Mormons responded with aspirations toward whiteness. It was a back and forth struggle between what outsiders imagined and what Mormons believed. Mormons ultimately emerged triumphant, but not unscathed. A portion of the cost of their struggle came at the expense of their own black converts. Mormon leaders moved away from universalistic ideals toward segregated priesthood and temples, policies held firmly in place by the early twentieth century. So successful were they at claiming whiteness for themselves, that by the time Mormon Mitt Romney sought the Presidency in 2012, he was labelled “The whitest white man to run for office in recent memory.” Mormons once again found themselves on the wrong side of white.

W. Paul Reeve is Associate Professor, History, The University of Utah.

BX8611-R44-2015-cover

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On Display — Student work

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Physical Exhibitions

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amatl, Book Arts Program, conquest, Dept. of Languages and Literature, Emily Tipps, history, indigenous, Isabel Dulfano, J. Willard Marriott Library, Latin American, Luise Poulton, poetry, rare books, Scott Beadles, Spanish, The University of Utah



On Display, Levels 1 & 2 Wall Cases, J. Willard Marriott Library
Student work for SPAN4900-3, “Indigenous Writing and Culture,” Spring Semester 2015, Prof. Isabel Dulfano, Dept. of Languages and Literature, in collaboration with Luise Poulton, Rare Books and Emily Tipps, Book Arts Program.

Professor Dulfano’s statement: This class examined Latin American indigenous writing and culture to make manifest the wide spectrum of representation and depiction of the indigenous in canonical and non-canonical letters. Our visits to the library coincided with a chronological approach taken toward analysis of the images and documents shaping the contemporary imaginary about, and by the Indigenous in the region. The historical chronicles authored by the Spanish conquerors, ecclesiastical documents, treatises about the Black Legend and violent conquest, facsimiles of accordion style codices elaborated by native informants and priests on amatl paper, first-edition testimonials, dramas, poetry, and contemporary art books brought the subject to life as students engaged with the content and distinct formats utilized since the conquest. We held history and various forms of knowledge in our hands, turned the pages and interacted directly with the manuscripts containing these ideas. As we learned about literary production in class, the sessions held in the library reinforced and made real the ideas that have shaped our understanding of the conquest of the indigenous peoples and their colonized worldview.

Photographs of display by Scott Beadles, Rare Books assistant

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Congratulations, Dr. Thompson!

03 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Awards

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Associate Dean for Special Collections, CIMA, Colorado, Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists, Denver, Gregory C. Thompson, Gregory Thompson, history, Intermountain West, J. Willard Marriott Library, Life-Time Achievement Award, rare books, University of Utah

Greg Award

Congratulations to Dr. Gregory Thompson, Associate Dean for Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library for receiving the Life-Time Achievement Award from the Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists (CIMA) for 2015. The award is given annually to individuals who have demonstrated considerable service and leadership in the Intermountain West, and who have made significant contributions to the CIMA organization and/or the archival profession. The CIMA Life-Time Achievement Award recognizes the work of an entire career, spanning the course of several years. The award was bestowed at the CIMA 2015 Western Roundup in Denver, Colorado (May 27-30).

The award states, “Gregory C. Thompson’s years as Associate Dean for Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, have been a shining beacon in our profession’s efforts to preserve history for researchers of today and tomorrow.

Undoubtedly, his efforts will ensure that countless stories from the historical record will be saved, and will have a chance to be forwarded to generations to come…[his] work having been recognized on the state, regional, and national level has brought prestige and gravitas to the archival profession in the inter-mountain region.”

Well put! Dr. Thompson’s work has also brought prestige and gravitas to the J. Willard Marriott Library and The University of Utah. Rare Books is proud to call him “boss.”

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